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Review: Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

When Mum left to give a presentation on lizards, she made sure that Dad knew just what he had to do. One item on the list was getting milk, but that didn’t happen. So when the family woke to dry cereal and no milk for tea, Dad headed out to get the milk. He didn’t return for a long, long time. But when he came back he had quite a story about why he was late. It involved time travel, a brilliant dinosaur, pirates who don’t have a plank to walk, wumpires with long teeth, and lots and lots of silliness.

Gaiman is a chameleon of an author, keeping us guessing what his next book will be like because one never knows what style he will try next. Here he is in pure farce mode, something that will enchant young readers even as they can’t read because they are giggling too much. The humor here is nonstop, one maniac moment after another until you can’t quite tell which way is up. It’s a grand adventure filled with outright one-liners and puns.

Young’s illustrations are such a part of this book, it is like Gaiman illustrated it himself. The results are wacky and purely funny. The father character seems to me to be a marvelous mix of several Dr. Who characters with his dangling striped scarf, wild hair and rather dapper approach to things.

Hilarious, wacky and wonderful, get this into the hands of elementary aged kids now. Appropriate for ages 6-8.